


Porcelain Moons

by Al_D_Baran



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: All Hurt No Comfort actually, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Bloodborne - Bloodborne, Cant Fuck The Doll, Character Death, Dolls, Dolls Have No Genitals, Forbidden Love, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Madness, Magic, Mild Smut, Monsters, Not Beta Read, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Character Death, Period-Typical Homophobia, Smut, Trans Character, Trans Keith (Voltron), Trans Male Character, Werewolf Hunters, guess ur reconsidering ur doll kink now uh, idk what else to tag this is weird as shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-22 22:11:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10706184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Al_D_Baran/pseuds/Al_D_Baran
Summary: Shiro, a demoted monster hunter, makes a doll in the image of his lost lover using forbidden magic.(Hunter!Shiro x Doll!Keith. Bloodborne-inspired but not in the actual Bloodborne universe.)





	1. a doll is servile

**Author's Note:**

> I have a whole lot of feelings about the idea of Gehrman making a doll after Lady Maria. I haven’t played Bloodborne so don’t expect much lore here, I only watched the Grumps play because I’m a filthy casual.
> 
>  _Oily marks appear on walls_  
>  _Where pleasure moments hung before._  
>  _The takeover, the sweeping insensitivity of this still life._  
>  — Imogen Heap, “Hide & Seek”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was forbidden to learn such magic for hunters. It would corrupt, inevitably, but the man had long since stopped caring.

_“A doll is servile. A doll cannot think for itself, even when the Breath has been inspired within it. It shall never know right from wrong, for Breath is not Soul."_

_— Vitae Magicae, The Puppeteer’ Spells for Ballets and Operas, Preface, III rd Edition._

 

 

 

The full moon shone brightly through the muslin curtains that covered it. Only a candle lit the desk as the doll-maker busied himself over his desk, holding a delicate hand as he carved, sanded its pieces, linking each of phalanges together minutely. Paint was applied with reverence, slowly, a hint of red over peach, making them look as if they blushed, reddened with a little cold. No detail was left untouched, and if it hadn’t been for the obviously inhuman joints, it would have looked entirely human.

The wrist was attached to the arm of the naked doll, it’s smooth skin shining under both the stars outside and the warm glow of the candle. The deep purple of the glass eyes caught the flame, half-lidded under the thick lashes of the eyelid. A strikingly realistic doll of a young man with long black hair, plump lips, rosy cheeks, almond eyes.

“Baby,” the hunter murmured, a scarred hand running on the dried paint of the doll’s face. It stood still, naked, in a heap of porcelain limbs on the corner of a desk. Right next to it, a picture of a young man, entirely similar, grainy, yellow. The doll had the same serious expression as the young man in hunter garb, staring at the camera with a determined look. Behind him was another man, clothed in the same fashion, holding the feathered hat to his chest.

The dollmaker pulled his creation to his chest, watching as its hair brushed its naked shoulder, the head falling to his shoulder with soft clatters. He held one hand, pushing the doll fingers of the arms he made through the doll’s, holding it tightly a she whispered again, “Baby.” The man sat in a rocking chair, cradling it against him as he smiled, kissing the hair of the doll’s brow, arranging it so it would straddle him. There was an opening on the doll’s back, topped with a delicate lock. He had the key, of course, and flicked it open.

There was a tiny cache inside of it, carved inside the china.

“Ah, where is it?” the hunter asked softly, sing-song, patting his breast pocket as he finally found it. A lock of jet black hair, exactly like the doll’s, tightly woven with a red thread. It was dusty, dry with age but he caressed it dearly. Placing it inside the doll, he locked it again, placing the key around his neck once again.

It was almost done. His doll was almost ready. The hunter laid it back on the ground, on the middle of intricate chalk drawings, in an ancient and complicated tongue. Forbidden magics were difficult to learn but nothing could have stopped the dollmaker, who lit every candles, burning various kind of incense. The soft smell of smoke and aromas filled the room, the hunter sitting back as he recited the incantation.

It was forbidden to learn such magic for hunters. It would corrupt, inevitably, but the man had long since stopped caring. He longed for the warmth he’d been missing, even if it would only be a mirror image, something lesser, like his arm. Something to fill a void he couldn’t bear to stay empty anymore, the missing pieces somehow stabbing him each time he noticed their absence. He said it as many times as the books said to say.

There was a gust of wind, extinguishing the candles and blowing the smoke of the incenses across the room. There was a rattle coming from the doll as it moved on its own, the moon lighting it as it blinked, once, twice. It looked at itself, noticing its nakedness as the hunter pulled it up, wrapping it in a delicate cloth, shimmering gold embroideries catching its eyes as it let itself be hold.

It looked up to him, blinking as its navy eyes focused on him.

Instantly, the doll recognized him, “Shiro – Takashi,” it said, softly, in the same voice.

The man beamed instantly, holding the doll against him as he shook, forcing himself to be gentle. Porcelain was delicate. It would break, even if it was the highest quality. If he was too rough, he could hurt it – he could hurt him, he thought.

Shiro swallowed hard, feeling the doll’s stare as tears spilled on his cheeks. _He recognizes me_ , he thought, laughing through his sobs, feeling the cloak slip on his creation’s shoulders, kissing it fervently, earning only a soft gasp from it. He brushed his nose against his temple, his cheekbone, his jaw. The porcelain was still cold, still smooth yet rough from pain. Shiro kissed it again, his fingers touching the doll’s chest – there was something akin to a heartbeat there, the magic whirring inside, a little like breaths, even if the doll could never breathe.

“Keith,” Shiro called as the doll lifted its head to look at him, placing its fingers on his cheeks, tracing his scar. There seemed to be memories behind its emotionless eyes. The doll recognized his name, remembered them, remembered him. And Keith closed his eyes, relaxing against him. Where there should have been a sigh, Shiro petted his back, sliding his hand over the golden lock on the doll’s back.

On Keith’s back.

“Keith,” he said again, “baby. It’s good to have you back.”


	2. nothing but china and human hair

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's so much to be done.

_"Those who play with them mustn’t forget that Dolls are nothing but china and human hair, without life, without goals."_

_— Vitae Magicae, The Puppeteer’ Spells for Ballets and Operas, Preface, III rd Edition._

 

 

 

The Hunters were a band of warriors, sworn to protect Altea from the dangers outside of its walls. It used to be an order, something it took years of work to be finally accepted into. But now, those same dangers were so numerous, from undeads to vampires, from werewolves to poltergeists, that it only took a knowledge in gun-wielding, weapons in general, a vague capacity to survive and guts to be accepted. Altea was populated by many now and work would never be scarce.

If a candidate survived their first Hunt, they would be awarded the right to keep the garb and weapons. Some swore it was still tainted in the blood of previous canditates but none would say word, they were sent right back, up to the slaughter, where they would either be the victim or the perpetrator.

“There is never little to be done,” superiors would say, always, in that tired tone.

Shiro would say it too, often. Keith would repeat it with irony, Lance would utter the words with mockery.

There was so much to do, so little time. Shiro barely remembered the days were insouciance was something he felt, between the werewolves’ fur, wet with blood and the silver bullets he picked up through muddy ectoplasms. He gained scars, the exhausted look of hunters, the marks of his years there, of his capacities.

There was so much to be done.

So much to be done to protect Altea.

Its humid streets, covered in the content of chamber pots poured out the windows, the overflowing sewers, the smell of rot. The noise, the cacophony. Altea smelled of humans, of their vices and hunger, their greed and their dejections.

Outside, even with monsters and outsiders, there was the smell of spring. A world without laws he breezed through, able to feel the tender grass between his fingertips. There was always Keith, Keith and his mockery, the way he would say that there was _so much_ to be done, mocking Iverson’s tone, laughing as if everything didn’t matter.

And yet, he looked at him like everything mattered when he held his face between his hands, the black feathers of his garb so soft under his fingertips, wet with dew and rain, a quiet will in his features. Keith was beautiful and Shiro loved his lips against the scar on the bridge of his nose, loved his words, the cynicism, their stolen moments outside the walls.

Inside the city walls, there were laws. Laws for the good order of society, for the good behaviour of everyone – merchants, citizens, guards, hunters. The price of bread could not be higher than those of a dozen of apples, a dozen of apples’ prices should always equal three loaves of bread, a bag of flour could only cost as much as four bottles of milk. Hunters should always be seen in their garbs while outside of the barracks, guards should do the same while on duty. Hunters should never marry.

Not two men could lay together, for it was sin in the eyes of the Gods.

It was punished. By law.

Laws were made by men, men who would never step outside the walls.

Without laws outside, outside the walls, Shiro could lie right over him. A moment stolen away from those who would punish. There was no crime if none was there to witness it, no hint of wrong when he’d burry his face against Keith’s neck. He promised to build a home for them, away from the world, in an field of flowers, with walls high enough to keep the monsters away.

“We’ll fight them off,” Keith would say, laughing, watching him with mirth in his dark eyes.

And Shiro would believe him, each times.

A permission was granted, a house was built, quaint, quiet, surrounded by walls and Order-approved spells to keep the Others away, a privilege granted only to most decorated Hunters like Shiro. The Order approved. A blind eye was turned, even if it was a disgusted one. There was too much work to be done for law to meddle in the Order of Hunters’ affairs and Shiro was thankful that, forever, work would never be missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are better than kudos.  
> Thank you guys for the love on the last part!


	3. many have fallen to their own creation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiro knew he could learn to love a different Keith.  
> He wanted to believe he did.

_"Caution must be advised when making one, for many have fallen to their own creation."_

_— Vitae Magicae, The Puppeteer’ Spells for Ballets and Operas, Preface, III rd Edition._

 

 

No one would have suspected unlawful magic to have been performed in the living room. Shiro cleaned it neatly, replacing every chairs, burying the imperfect attempts at dolls that had cluttered his house for months in the garden. To hide his tracts, he planted a garden there with Keith, watching intently as the doll would carefully clip at the roses in the garden, clean the bird baths, the windows.

It was gracious, like it had been made for ballets, which it had been. The spells had been made, ages ago, it felt, for the Grand Ballet of Altea, where dolls, once a pinnacle of magic, were made to dance, twirl and float across the floor, like ghosts in see-through sheets.

It made sense to him. Keith had always been gracious in battles, swift on his feet. The kind of grace a Reaper would have, in blood and death, where dolls were gracious in art and beauty.

A forbidden art now, as many thought the mirror image of humans being so servile could only be hubris, a will to be like the Gods, puppetry was now prohibited, punished by imprisonments and even death, depending on what crime had been committed, how many dolls were made.

In his lifetime, Shiro had never seen anyone, even once, be punished for such a crime. All books about puppetry had been burned, all dark magic made to create something akin to humans locked away, hidden from view, in hopes no one would find it. But Shiro had always been determined, willing, empty. Something had to be filled and if it wasn’t alcohol or opiates, it was a warm body.

But Keith was never warm.

Not this one. This one always looked at him, waiting for him to speak, calm, placid. The doll watched tirelessly, coming when it was ordered to come close, answering questions, knowing him without fail. Sometimes he can almost think it’s Keith, the one he’s buried himself, the one he wakes up at night, still, fearing he’s dug out of his grave as an undead, fears to see him at the foot of his bed, watching him.

Hunters are usually burned at a pyre. It’s an event. But traditions are left away now, the Order isn’t what it used to be.

There’s a void he filled with whatever he could, a hole in the dam, still fragile and brittle. His house is cleaner ever since he finished the doll, ever since Keith was back. There’s no complaints when he tells it to wait in the basement when Lance, Hunk or Pidge come from the citadel to check on him. Shiro had been stripped of his functions ever since he lost his arm, given another one to make up for the loss, unfit for his job after his best soldier died in his arms.

They thought he was doing better. The house wasn’t a mess anymore, Lance was glad he’d stopped moping so much, that the garden looked wonderful. Everything was prim, as it should have been. Just as it was when Keith was there, though everyone avoided to breach the subject, to even mention there had been someone else on their team, that the missing piece made the whole machine crumble. Shio didn’t know whether he was thankful or uncomfortable for them to keep the sensitive wound out of sight but he didn’t want to think of it when his friends were there.

His life was different now.

Keith himself was a stark reminder of it, of how this retirement should have been different. When he expected Keith to burst, to mock or laugh, there was nothing. The obvious was stated, servile concern. Dolls were, after all, always made to be servants, to obey. Keith was anything but servile and obedient, nothing if not irreverent and rebellious. Shiro missed him even when he was holding him as tight as a fragile doll could be held, missed him when the doll would rub his back, soothingly, like the spell made it do. The irony of missing the one with the face of the doll he was holding was not lost on him. The magic had been forbidden for a reason. A spitting image, even as faithful to the original, would never be anything but a substitute, a simulation.

But there was a hole in his body, a hole in his bed, in his house, in his life.

Shiro knew he could learn to love a different Keith.

He wanted to believe he did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this one is a little bit shorter than the rest, haha.  
> The next one is shorter, though. The next ones will be longer.  
> So fret not.  
>  ~~this wasn't supposed to be multichapter but i didn't want to wait anymore to post this~~  
>  Next chapter is where you should get your tissues, btw.  
> Just reminding: comments are great! Thank you all for the great comments, I read them all multiple times.  
> Much love to you all.


	4. someone its creator knows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “There was a wolf,” Lance said, slowly, as if the thought scared him even now.

_"Thus, the Guild advises dolls not to be modelled after someone its creator knows."_

_— Vitae Magicae, The Puppeteer’ Spells for Ballets and Operas, Preface, III rd Edition._

 

 

 

“Are you awake?”

It was Lance.

Shiro felt like he had been trampled, looking around the room in confusion. He couldn’t remember what had led him there but… he remembered this room. It was the barracks’ infirmary wing, all clean white, sterile, busy with doctors and nurses hurrying around. Death waited for no one and there was so much to be done, so many Hunters to save, even if many more would fill in the voids made by Death’s grim passage.

“Shit, you are.” Lance laughed, like he was relieved, joyless and dry. It didn’t fit him and the boy-turned-man looked at him with wet eyes. He looked like he had fallen from the Citadel’s walls, bruised and hurt, one arm in a sling that he cradled carefully. There were dark circles under his eyes – Shiro expected he looked worse.

“Do you… remember what happened?” Lance asked carefully.

Shiro tried to talk, finding the simple task too daunting even and simply shook his head. Lance offered him some water and Shiro noticed Pidge was sleeping next to him, thankfully, not on a bed, but crooked on the floor, arms crossed under the face. Shiro wanted to reach to pet her hair, but his arm seemed to refuse to move.

He looked down to see nothing but a stump. Faintly, he remembered the feeling of teeth on it, chewing until it reached the bone, until there was a crunch. When he turned back to Lance, he seemed about to be sick. Shiro kept from asking about it.

The Hunt had went sour, he thought.

A prey turned predator, becoming the prey once again.

But he was alive.

“There was a wolf,” Lance said, slowly, as if the thought scared him even now. “It was… it wasn’t a wolf. It looked like… something in a shroud, it growled and it… it wasn’t a wolf. It was bigger. Us five… it was too much.” The young man looked back at him, staring at the white linen on him. The busy sounds of the infirmary filled the silence. Shiro only just noticed Hunk, on his other side, his head laid on Lance’s laps, the sound of a quiet sob coming out of him. Lance’s face contorted.

Shiro looked at them, voice shaking as he asked, voice so weak he winced, “Keith?”

Lance looked away.

“When the – the _thing_ got your arm, you… you couldn’t fight and Keith stepped in.”

Shiro remembered.

The moonlight shining on the feathers, the snarling creature charging on him with its sharp antlers. Keith shot, danced, looked like a crow, a deadly creature of the night in his own right. But there was nothing, after he had turned to Pidge, head pounding as she had made a tourniquet around the grisly remains of his right arm.

Keith had still been in front of him, an angel of demise, like always, protecting him with everything he had to give.

Everything he had.

Lance took a moment to talk again, letting out a shuddering breath, “He… he’s in isolation right now. He isn’t… going to make it. When the help came, it was already…” Lance had to laugh there, grim and wiping his eyes. “That thing did a number on him but… it was a goner by the time backup arrive, you know? Keith really was—is, he’s a great hunter. Gives everything he got.”

 _Everything he had_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that was pretty short. But! next one will be longer. Next one also has the smut.  
> You might want to be careful. Due to how Keith is, the next chapter _could_ be considered dub-con.


	5. what longing does to hearts who feel incomplete

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You wouldn’t mind?” Shiro asked slowly, watching the moonlight seeping in the room, forehead pressed to Keith’s nude shoulder.  
> “It would make you sad,” Keith stated.  
> “You would die.”  
> “I already did. It hurt. I cannot feel anything in this body. It would be painless.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or, the summary as Marco proposed: "You've heard of sex dolls, now consider this: dolls that can't have sex. But when there's a will, there's a way."

_"After all, no man is a stranger to what longing does to hearts who feel incomplete."_

_— Vitae Magicae, The Puppeteer’ Spells for Ballets and Operas, Preface, III rd Edition._

 

 

 

 

Dolls never slept. Shiro wished he could sleep cuddled with him, but the risk of breaking it wasn’t one he was willing to take. The doll had been instructed to stand up once he’d fall asleep and occupy itself during the night time.

Keith spent his nights on a rocking chair by the window, where he’d find Keith in the mornings, watching the horizon, unreadable, an expression not unlike the doll’s now. It was like it remembered this was his favoured place, Keith’s preferred spot to fall asleep, next to the fire, a book left open on his thighs.

His habits, even, seemed to transcend the doll, somehow. Keith remembered the way he liked his tea, remembered to make some in the morning, in a servant’s routine. He would bring it to his bed and wake him slowly, running his porcelain knuckles over his brows, like Keith used to run his own hand over his face when they would sleep next to each other. Once he’d wake, Keith would pour him the Early Grey into a dainty cup, attend to the care of his own doll hand to make sure if was still functioning.

Not unlike Keith, the fingers’ pieces were sewn together by strands of his own hair, braided together carefully, strands by strands. It had been what had taken the most time – to make all of the threaded needed to make the doll. Shiro didn’t want to think of what he had done to get the thread and the fine, bone-china dust he had needed to make the doll. It had been made from the very ingredients here, some had been found in the poor alleys of the town.

Shiro would run his hands through Keith’s hair in the mornings, too, coming behind his rocking chair one he was done eating. Keith would bring the tray back to the kitchen and come back to be dressed, arms raised for his lover to place one of his shirt on him. Each days felt like a lazy Sunday when Keith wore his clothes. Keith had always loved his dress shirts.

Keith had always hated dresses, the way they floated around him, were forced on him. All molds were made for dolls to wear dresses, the vaporous shrouds he had seen, pictured in the Puppeteer’s book, to make them look more ethereal as they danced. Sweeter to the eyes when they were used as servants. Prettier when they were used as gratification objects. Shiro wanted normalcy, the routine he had lost. He buttoned it up to the last few, looking at the way his lover floated in it.

“It’s a shame your hunter garb is unusable,” Shiro mused. “I know you would have liked to wear it.”

“It is comfortable,” Keith stated, expressionless. “This is too.” He looked at himself, in the wide shirt, with an expression someone else might have taken for curiosity but Shiro knew better. Dolls could not have human emotions – they lacked the hormones, the glands and human organs to have them. With no vesicle to have bilious temperament, Keith had no oil to wake the fire he had.

But even with no heart to break or beat, Keith seemed to remember his pain. The loss, the last hunt.

He’d recount it with bone-chilling calm, as if his own death left him indecisive, “It wasn’t a wolf. It was another monster. An unknown one. Maybe it’s another kind of plague. It rammed inside me and I saw my organs spill out. But I knew I couldn’t let that thing touch you. I thought it was for love. For you.”

Soul, if it had no feelings to marry itself with, was memory and logic. Memory with no feelings – a syllabus of Keith’s experiences, objective in everything. Keith would hold him because he knew, by experience, that it would make him feel better. There was no want or need in him, for he didn’t even need to eat or sleep. Keith acted only because of logic rather than emotions. It was odd to see such an emotion-driven young man become all cold logistics.

It was similar enough for Shiro to just close his eyes and imagine this was Keith. His Keith, who he taught his name now and before, his job. Watched him sew feathers to his cloak then, from the corpse of a monstrous crow, so that he would look like a bird. Lance used to call him bird brains. The people of Altea would nickname him the crow.

Shiro preferred nightingale. Keith had always been gifted at music.

“It was expected of me to learn music and hold a house,” he told him, porcelain fingers tracing the ivory keys of the piano in front of him, one night Shiro couldn’t sleep because of nightmares. “To learn to sew, to make dinner, to be religious and make tea for a man to come home to. To be soft and sweet, demure and entertain. But that wasn’t me.”

“You are nothing like this,” Shiro said, arms wrapped around his middle, kissing a path on his neck. “You could never be demure and soft. You’re you, perfect as you are. The most fearsome hunter I’ve ever known. An amazing warrior. I would marry you if we could be.”

Keith turned to him, expression as empty as ever, “I’m a doll. If marriage makes you happy, then we should. But Dolls are forbidden. Marriage is forbidden between men here. They would kill you.”

Shiro swallowed. Keith was supposed to scoff and push him away a little, say marriage was stupid and that their love was better. Marriage wasn’t made for love – marriage was like slavery and Keith wanted nothing to hear of it.

“They would break you,” Shiro said, as if this was worse than for him to die.

Keith only watched him, as if being broken was nothing to fear. Shiro held him a little tighter, feeling the smoothness of the paint on his inner thigh with his thumb. Keith played a sonnet with slow care, fingers gracefully moving on the keys, like he remembered every note he had ever learned.

“You wouldn’t mind?” Shiro asked slowly, watching the moonlight seeping in the room, forehead pressed to Keith’s nude shoulder.

“It would make you sad,” Keith stated.

“You would die.”

“I already did. It hurt. I cannot feel anything in this body. It would be painless.”

Shiro stayed silent this time, watching a bird land on the windowsill. It chirped and Keith hit another key, starting a slower ballad. It used to lull him into sleep.

“Sing me a song,” Shiro asked.

“What song?” There was the untold “Master” at the end of the sentence. Shiro had told him to stop using it. Keith had obeyed. What Shiro wouldn’t have given for a cheeky repetition.

“Any song,” he murmured, eyes closed, head laid against the doll’s nape.

Their previous conversation seemed to fit with the theme of the song.

“I learned it at the orphanage. They taught us to sing it, so we could sing it to our children later. To teach them not to lose time with false loves.”

He accompanied it of a simple piano tune, voice as sweet as a song bird as always. Shiro wished he could have laid his head into his laps then to fall asleep. _Beware, beware, keep your garden fair, let no man steal your thyme_. Shiro knew Keith had always hated this song and cut him in the middle of it, pulling him to face him to press a kiss to his lips.

“I wasn’t done playing,” Keith whispered against his mouth. Shiro smiled, pulling away just a little. From this angle, this look exactly like Keith, outlined by the moon behind him.

“I know. You hate this song,” he said. “So I don’t like it.”

“I can sing another. I know many songs.”

Shiro’s smile fell at that and he shook his head. He didn’t need songs. Maybe sleep was a better idea. Yet, he couldn’t help but ask, “Did I ever steal your thyme?”

Keith would have called him stupid. He hoped for it, even when he knew it was impossible. Keith was impassive, even to the memory of their love.

“I gave you my thyme with no regrets.” There wasn’t even doubts in the words. No hesitation. Tit for tat, Keith spoke. “You never stole. I only gave. There was no pressure. I fought for you because you were the most important person to me and I loved you. I could never have loved another man like you. I could never have loved anyone else like that. I gave it to you because you deserved it by being yourself.”

The analogy was obvious. And Shiro remembered that night too well, fumbling in the dark, Keith’s nervous little laughs soothed by his kisses. The warmth of his body against his, soft and pliant and muscular, the tenderness of their kisses. The memory squeezed him like it was trying to burry itself under his skin, dragging deep red welts over his chest.

“Let’s go to bed,” he murmured, throat tight as he led Keith to the mattress.

The doll stepped in by automatism, lifting the sheet to lie on Keith’s preferred side. Shiro needed to be closer to the door to rest easier, to be able to aim quicker to the door with the colt he left under the bed. Always loaded with a box of bullets right next to it. Just to make sure. Shiro touched it to ease his nerves, feeling the polished ivory of it under his fingertips, turning to wrap himself around Keith’s body.

Days passed again – Shiro had to send Keith to the basement when their friends came. He wondered idly, for all visit, if he could have shown them. If they could have been brought in the secret. If imagining their discomfort wasn’t enough, Lance informed him with an odd face that he had been promoted to take over their team. Shiro, as he had been for most of a year now, would stay on undetermined leave. He wondered if it was vengeance for being what he was, in love with another man. Crippled from the fight as much as the loss of his soldier.

“It’s alright,” he told Lance. “I’m sure you’ll learn to be a good leader.”

And Lance smiled, as if that had been exactly what he needed to hear. Shiro had no doubt Lance could learn to lead well – now, he wasn’t the best but he had the charisma needed to be followed. Shiro hoped he could correct the flaws he needed to.

When Keith left the basement that evening, when the sun was setting behind the hills, the first thing he said, without being prompted, was a simple, “That was unfair.”

“What was unfair?”

“What the Hunters did to you. It was Lance’s mistake. He caused the beast to shift.”

If Shiro’s ear wasn’t trained, he could have missed something that looked like anger. A little tilt, something that made Keith’s voice a little less even. He stood suddenly, walking to meet the doll as it turned to him. Shiro remembered.

“It was his mistake. He’ll learn from it.”

But Shiro didn’t care about Lance. Taking Keith’s face between his hands, Shiro watched him as if he saw the doll for the first time. The exact same. He had copied down to little sun spots next to Keith’s chin, a speck on a perfect canvas. It looked exactly the same, the same little spot he always would kiss. Shiro ran his finger over it, feeling varnish and paint beneath his fingertips rather than warmth and flesh.

“I miss you,” he said before he could stop the words from spilling out his lips. It felt like retching, like pulling a nail right out of damp driftwood when it had sunk in with the years.

If the doll hadn’t been so logical, it would have reminded him it was right there. That he had his hands on it, that he was touching it. But the doll knew – Shiro didn’t miss it; he missed Keith, like he couldn’t breathe when he was gone. Like there had been parts of him who had shrunk or died when the young man died in his arms.

“Why did you make me?” It asked, like it was curious.

Shiro shrugged, feeling tears well up in his eyes. Looking at Keith was so painful suddenly and he swallowed hard, rubbing his palm over his face, letting out a joyless laugh.

“I don’t know,” he said, truthfully, turning back to the doll as it stepped closer, holding him. Shiro wanted to believe it was for more than the comfort it was made to give. And when its hands settled on his shoulder blades, just like Keith always used to do, Shiro closed his eyes. Never had he loved anyone like this. “I miss you.”

Never would he love anyone like this again.

So if he had to love anyone else, Shiro would chose a slightly different Keith over no one. The hole in himself had to be filled and if Keith didn’t fit so well anymore, it was alright.

“Keith,” he gasped, pulling his chin up to kiss him slowly. “I love you. I love you.”

It didn’t matter if Keith’s skin was rough from paint. Shiro picked him up in his arms with alarming ease, a little like the first time they had met. Keith had been so thin and small, so handsome. The smoothness of the doll’s skin reminded him of the youthfulness Keith had then, almost a decade ago. Twenty-seven was a much too young time to die, Shiro thought, laying Keith down to take the sight of him.

The doll’s limbs were connected with ball joints, all of a pristine, peachy colour. Shiro had tried to make sure it looked lively but he was no artist. There wasn’t a blush to the skin but the knees were a little rosier, glossy where the natural light hit them. Shiro kissed one sweetly, eyes closed. There was a faint perfume of roses on the doll’s surface, just to chase away the smell of porcelain.

When his lips moved to Keith’s neck and shoulder, Shiro heard the delicate fingers lie on his own, clicking ever so softly. He unbuttoned the shirt he had carefully dressed Keith with that morning, opening it slowly, fingers running over the porcelain of his chest. There wasn’t much to see but the expense of pure white china, tastefully dotted with pink blushes. The doll’s body showed no distinctive characteristics of any sex, making it all the more androgynous.

Shiro’s fingers went all the way to the mons Venus, the skin there carrying on for longer than it should have, with no bulge nor folds to finish it. Shiro couldn’t even bear to caress it, moving to the fragile hips, holding them carefully with his own porcelain hand. He remembered everything there that used to make Keith grip his head and shoulders, dig little half-moons inside his scalp from pleasure. Shiro touched his own hair, as if expecting Keith to push him down to meet his sex, his patience running thin.

There was nothing down there. It wasn’t what he had missed – Shiro had wanted, much more than sex, to meet Keith’s eyes in the morning and fall asleep against him. It had, frankly, been the last of his worries then. It almost stopped him from moving anymore, the sight of the inhumanity of the doll he had created, whirring with a breath under its skin, yet never filling with air, immobile and dead even when it was moving.

His eyes rose to Keith again, the picture blurring in front of him. Black hair in the moonlight, kiss-pinked lips, soft and tender… A laugh when something felt just a little odd, just a little ticklish. Shiro smiled at the memory, letting it melt in the present as he kissed Keith’s jaw, settling between his thighs, needing to touch after almost an entire year without it.

“Is this okay?” he asked, rubbing his clothed crotch against the porcelain of the thighs, the delicate hands ghosting over the muscles of his ribs.

“If you want it,” Keith said, voice low and soft against his ear, neck craned to give him more access.

Shiro kissed it tenderly, unlacing his pants, pulling his underwear down. His knuckles were pressed to the smooth surface of the inner thigh, his palm slicked with his own pre-cum. His mechanical hand threaded through Keith’s hair, breathing laboured. Keith wrapped his arms around him loosely, his hand reaching up, tentatively to touch his hair, hiding him a little more in the crook of his neck.

Shiro fell boneless as he came, draped over the doll – no, Keith’s body, careful not to even crack it.

“Let’s clean you up, baby,” he said, once he had regained his breath. He picked a handkerchief from the table, running it over the smooth skin of Keith’s lower body, wiping his own hand before throwing it down.

Keith only needed to be nudged a little to start petting his hair, letting him drift off slowly.

His Keith, all that he had – all that he needed.

And if he was a little different, Shiro could learn to love him once again.

 

 

 

“ _Remember when we found misery_

_We watched her, watched her spread her wings_

_And slowly, slowly fly around our room_

_And she asked for your gentle mind_ ”

— Misery is a Butterfly, Blonde Redhead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised it would be longer and delivered.  
> I'm... not entirely sure the trans part is ok? I'm. I try my best but if something is off, please do tell me. I have a few other ideas with that headcanon too (I admit, it's my favourite of Keith) but since I'm not trans I'm just not sure what is a no-no or something I can do. I'm only a biromantic ace who grew up in an especially accepting family so dkfjelfjkd  
> The epilogue is to come tomorrow night. Thank you all so much for all the comments and kudos! I'm glad so many people liked this story. I'll answer to all your comments once I'm done tomorrow night.  
> Thanks again.


	6. a mirror's image can never be what it reflects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were little sounds coming from the busy wing next to them, just three inches of iron and leather away, leaving the room filled the pained rasps come from the only bed in the room.

_"A mirror’s image can never be what it reflects.”_

_— Vitae Magicae, The Puppeteer’ Spells for Ballets and Operas, Preface, III rd Edition._

 

 

 

They wouldn’t let him go see him. The Hunters knew now and most watched him with curious eyes. It was a story to recount, as if this detail took precedence over the fact Keith had been so grievously wounded. When all four of them kept saying that Keith was exactly who he said he was, without any hesitation, the subject was eventually dropped.

“It won’t matter anymore, soon,” Iverson said with a shrug.

“Can I go see him then?” he had asked, heart ready to pounce when his body was ready to collapse.

No.

No, they wouldn’t let him. He had to heal a little more first. They fitted him with a painful doll prosthetic, promising a more resistant one than china when he’d be used to it. They needed him, needed his talent as a leader for the Hunters. Moving the fingers was tedious, the wrist moving sluggishly, as if it was covered in rust already.

He didn’t care. Each time he saw some of his team, Shiro asked about Keith.

He dreamt at night, once, of that big beast over him, antlers buried deep in his love’s sides, throwing him away. Keith had stood up then, gun shaking, fingers slipping on the trigger… Shiro could remember flashes of the event and no one dared to speak of what had happened to him.

When it had finally been three days he had awoken, Iverson allowed him to be sent to see Keith, more from his insistence and refusal to eat anymore if he didn’t go see him.

“It won’t matter if that little liar sees you,” he said, hesitating on the words to use.

The blood loss had made him anaemic. Hunk volunteered to wheel him there, on the opposite of the hospital wing. Shiro felt aggravated that they would put Keith in the women’s wing but kept his complaints to himself. It wouldn’t matter soon. He’d take Keith home, heal him himself if he needed to. Pidge was good with everything medical, so was Hunk. They wouldn’t let him down. If he had survived, Keith could, too.

The isolation was a dark room at the end of the hallway of beds, sealed by a heavy iron door, said to burn creatures as they touched. Shiro swallowed, running a palm on his face as he stood up.

“You’ll be locked in together,” one of the guard said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Sorry for the loss. You trained the kid, right?”

“He’s not dead yet,” he countered, wincing at the waver in his own voice.

Shiro nodded. Hunk handed him a crutch to help with walking and the pain it caused, touching his good shoulder, looking terribly worried as he saw the door close between them. There were little sounds coming from the busy wing next to them, just three inches of iron and leather away, leaving the room filled the pained rasps come from the only bed in the room.

Shiro hurried to Keith’s side, reaching out to touch his jaw carefully, a grim sentiment sinking into his stomach as he noticed how cold and clammy Keith was. The pale skin of his face was marked with black veins, as if he had been poisoned. Keith turned to unsettling yellow eyes to him, reaching to touch his hand weakly, breathing with sudden jumps of his shoulders each times.

There were bruises all over him, Shiro noticed as he pulled the blanket down a little, needing to inspect him. His ribs and arms were covered in bandages, some still stained with blood. That creature had been tainted with venomous bites or blood. Perhaps the antlers. There was a sickening smell of rot coming for Keith’s left flank, the unbuttoned shirt that had been put on him sliding down to reveal the pus-stained gauzes.

“Oh, baby,” Shiro whispered, eyes closing, pressing their foreheads together before kissing it, running a hand in the grime of his hair.

“You’re fine,” Keith whispered, as if it was an unsurmountable effort to speak. “You’re… you survived.”

“You’ll be fine too,” he assured, giving Keith a smile even when his throat was too tight to speak anymore. When he spoke again, his voice was strangled, “I’ll take care of you.”

It was a promise. He pulled the blanket up to hide Keith again, caressing his cheek as he nuzzled his temple. It felt like no one had come there for days. It was hard to pull himself away from Keith’s hold, even as weak as his fingers curled around his, to ask for nurses to come in and do something. The shirt was stained with fluids and the sheets needed to be changed. As a highly-decorated Hunter, Shiro knew refusal was something he wouldn’t be met with. A few nervous women walked in the room, as if expecting to see a monster behind the iron door.

Shiro couldn’t blame them. It was what the door looked like it should have held, after all.

He held Keith up gently, demanding to see, to have an idea of what was under the bandages. The creature had practically gutted him, the skin of his left side in tatters, some of the lower ribs visibly shattered under the flesh. Keith keened in pain when it was cleaned, the infected wounds opened again to be drained, cleaned, bandaged again. The young man’s head lolled against his shoulder, his sunken eyes staring at him with slow blinks.

Each time he caught his eyes, Shiro smiled, leaning in to peck his cheek.

He couldn’t care that someone was seeing them anymore. They had spent years hiding. Shiro expected he’d be sent home with a pension, Keith too, perhaps. Maybe their friends’ pleading for them could let them keep their title as Hunters but Keith looked like he needed the affection now. Especially when he fell asleep, breathing still as difficult as it was when he entered, his fingers lazily laced with his. Shiro couldn’t stop caressing the back of his hand with his thumb; it soothed him more than it could help Keith. With clean bedsheets and with a new gown, buttoned to hide him at least, Keith seemed to be finally comfortable, drifting against him after a few little words of affection.

It didn’t need to be much. Just Keith, asking him to call for dinner before falling back asleep. Shiro, of course, promised to do so, even if he couldn’t fathom the thought of putting food in his stomach now. After half an hour, when it seemed obvious  Keith was deep asleep, Shiro regretted the lie, just a little, just for lying to Keith.

The entire day eventually passed like this, Hunk and Lance eventually coming in, finding Shiro curled around Keith, taking as little room as he could on the bed. Lance looked sick and green as he stared at Keith, frozen as the door closed behind him. For once, Hunk seemed to be the most collected of the two, unable to hide the desolate look on his face as he noticed the harsh way Keith’s chest expanded as he breathed.

“You should go back to your bed,” Hunk said gently, placing a hand on his shoulder. “They say it’s dangerous for him to shift during the night. And… you wouldn’t want to be asleep during that time.”

But he couldn’t leave. Not right now.

“He… he might not pass through the night,” Shiro said, as if it was the first time he truly realized it.

Hunk looked even more heartbroken, eyes locked on Keith as his comrade fought for breath.

“Please. I just… one of you could stay, in case I fall asleep?” Shiro heard the begging in his own voice, threading his porcelain fingers through Keith’s messy hair, tightening his hold on Keith’s hand. Keith barely reacted, his head turning a little toward his shoulder, comfortably leaned against him. “He… he shouldn’t go alone,” he tried again, knowing he was only saying this not to leave, feeling a pinch of guilt at his own selfishness. He was putting his whole team in danger, just because he couldn’t bear to pull himself away from Keith.

Hunk turned to Lance, the two young men seeming to speak with their eyes for a second before Hunk rubbed his shoulder again.

“Alright. Lance’ll get Pidge and… we’ll stay with you two. I… we shouldn’t leave him alone. Yeah,” Hunk agreed, pulling a chair closer as Lance left the room.

Shiro relaxed, sending a grateful glance to Hunk before turning back to Keith. His skin was so pale it was almost translucent, skin pearled with tiny beads of cold sweat, the few strands of black hair that he hadn’t pushed back clinging to his forehead. Without thinking, Shiro brought his hand to his lips carefully to kiss his knuckles, keeping them against his face until Lance came back a few minutes later. His eyes were red-rimmed, an equally distraught Pidge followed him, cursing when she saw them like this. The young girl they’d all trained moved in next to him, touching Keith’s shoulder as her jaw tightened, sitting at the end of the bed, hands laid over his ankles as if she needed to touch to make it all real, eventually joined by Lance, who wrapped an arm around her waist. They held each other close, watching, all too aware there was nothing else to do now.

The hours passed slowly. Keith woke up only twice before the dawn came to them, looking around the room with unseeing eyes the first time before asking water. The second time, Keith had stared up at him without a word, falling back asleep as Shiro brought his hand closer to his chest, pulling the blanket a little higher on him when he guessed he might have been cold. With the blanket under his chin, Keith seemed to relax, if only a little, and Shiro tried to give him a gentle smile as he fell asleep.

Dawn trickled in through the small window of the door, as if there was a little hope for them. No shifting. Nothing better, but Keith was still himself, even if marred with grisly scars, a busted lower lip and the faint smell of infection clinging to the air. None of them slept or ate, sitting in near perfect silence, counting the minutes between the breaths.

Hunk shook him awake around noon. Shiro blinked blearily, knowing he mustn’t have slept for than a few minutes, still wrapped around Keith, his lover’s head buried in the crook of his shoulder.

“It’s over,” he said, voice so tight it was like someone gripped his throat.

Shiro saw how tense his face was, mind too frazzled to understand yet.

“He’s… he’s gone,” Hunk finished in a whisper, kneeling then, wrapping his heavy body over his. Shiro smelt the crisp scent of leather on him, heard the noises it made. Lance let out a sob and Pidge cursed. “It’s like he waited for you to fall asleep,” Hunk mused with a cry of his own. “Didn’t want to let you see him go.”

Shiro turned to Keith then, watching how still he was. Painless, for the first time in hours, as if peaceful, mouth just a little opened, as if to breathe. He waited for him to breathe again, for the suffering gasp that accompanied it. Nothing came for what felt like an eternity. He brought his hand to Keith’s face this time, noticing their fingers were still laced together. Keith was still warm, his cheeks still soft, his hair still silky.

“Baby,” he murmured.

Gone. Just like that.

And Shiro felt empty, like someone had just ripped an organ he’d never known he needed until now, like all that made him had been poured out. Like a water tank stabbed and emptied in just a minute.

Keith was gone.

 

 

 

Shiro asked to wash him. He didn’t trust anybody to do it. The Hunters asked for a ceremony for one of their best elements to be held, but seeing the way they spoke of Keith, Shiro refused. They tried to argument. Nothing would do.

He had wished there could have been something cathartic in watching Keith’s hair, to look at his body one last time before dressing him for a private funeral. Just them, Pidge’s brother, Allura, Coran, their team. One or two other Hunters who had known Keith. The feeling of emptiness grew with the water he poured, rinsing the lathered soap. He knew every little thing about Keith, every little place that made him ticklish.

There was no catharsis there. Nothing helped that he knew, when they would dig that hole, it would only make the one inside of him even bigger.

Everyone was so careful with him. Pidge asked to help and Shiro couldn’t have refused her, letting her hold the bottle of soaps and buckets. She didn’t speak, didn’t say a word, as if she knew there was nothing to say. Her throat bobbled with her sighs. Shiro knew he should have said something. But he couldn’t find the words, as if they had flown away from his lungs, like the birds out of a tree, each time he breathed out, thinking that, yes, next breath, he would say something to make her feel better.

He brushed his hair once it was dry, felt how soft it was between his fingers, the darkness of it. It was his last moment alone with him. Pidge left him to give him privacy to dress him up, to say his goodbyes without anyone else around. Shiro knew he could put the time he spent on it on his new arm when he spent minutes looking at a single strand, between his fingers and index.

Keith looking like a crow in his Hunter garb had never felt more fitting than when he lowered him in his casket. It was a simple ceremony. Lance said a prayer for the Great Ones, as he was a believer, an irony, when nor Keith nor he did quite believe in them, but Shiro knew it would make the rest of them feel better. It was a scary thing to think of, that the image of Keith, forever gone, would slowly rot under the earth.

Filling the hole only made the one inside of him more gaping, so wide it threatened to sallow him whole.

He felt something in his pocket as Lance spoke, between his finger and index.

A strand of hair, tied together with a red string.

There would be so much to be done.

 

 

 

“ _Don't cross your finger_  
_Sundays will never change_  
_They keep on coming_  
_You'll be a freak_  
_And I'll keep you company..._ ”  
— For The Damaged, Blonde Redhead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here we are. The end. Thank you all so much for following this and giving it as much love as you did.  
> I honestly wouldn't have finished this without all this outpour. Thank you all so much.  
> Don't step on your heart's pieces while leaving.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are better than kudos.  
> 


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